Anton Ego:

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau’s famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize that only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau’s, who is, in this critic’s opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau’s soon, hungry for more.

Gone Away to Another Place

Hi there, readers (yes, all three of you). From now until Reihan regains his senses, I'll be blogging with about half the rest of the blogosphere over at the new and extremely spiffy American Scene. (My first post is up now.)

I can't promise I won't post here again, but I also won't promise that I will. In all likelihood, I'll randomly, irregularly post things that I don't really want to discard entirely but don't really want read either. And then, eventually, I'll just turn this into a portfolio or list of publications or something self-obsessed and American and internety like that. So flock toward the new URL, dear readers, and enjoy the many rhetorical wares being peddled--or, perhaps more accurately, scattered with reckless abandon--there. Bless this lively new internet group home with your traffic and comments. Thanks for reading, even if it was just a result of accidentally stumbling upon this URL (likely, I suspect). It's been fun! Now the party continues elsewhere.

Stranger in a Strange Land

David Freddoso has a Brainwash column on the differences between New York and D.C. I think it’s probably one of those, “Oh shit, I have a column to write, what do I do?” columns that, let’s face it, everyone who has ever even thought about having a column—or any sort of regular writing, really—has written, and that bloggers writer almost exclusively, but it’s really quite good anyway. (Sometimes that happens. Things you write that you think will be TEH AWESUM end up sort of mediocre, and half-assed ideas that you throw together in panic at 1:30am the night before and finish editing three minutes after your deadline end up being surprisingly good. A teacher once told me that most writers only like 30% of what they like. Anyway.)

Freddoso writes:

I’ve been back all of three times since I left in 2001. But The City has a way of seeping into one’s bowels and staying there for years. That’s my excuse, anyway, for telling off that kid yesterday who was panhandling in Union Square, wearing nicer clothes than I own. It’s why I step in front of people at street-corners, keep my eyes straight ahead, and walk as though there’s a tribe of screaming cannibals on the block behind me.

It’s why I could not resist looking at the Subway map for five minutes to figure out how the new (as of 2002, I think) train lines would have affected my old daily commute from Midtown to Bay Ridge.

Just a few friendly hints about the Subway for Washingtonians: Don’t expect to understand a word the conductor says -- it’s actually against the law for them to speak English or any other recognizable language over the train loudspeaker. Don’t refer to the trains by colors, don’t stand back to let people off the train, and DO NOT call it “Metro.” Most importantly, don’t smile or act like you’re happy about life while riding the Subway, or else everyone will know you’re from out of town and you’ll definitely lose your wallet.

Let’s see…the 6 to Bleecker Street, the B to Pacific St., the N to 59th Street, the R to 86th Street -- ah, I’d have one less step in my commute if I still lived here. That is, unless there’s a track fire, or my train derails, or some idiot pulls the emergency brake and costs me 30 minutes on my ride home.

It’s true that when you live in a city like this, at least when living on less than six figures, you become obsessed with public transportation, partly because you spend so much time on it, because the way it works and doesn’t work, its schedules and failures and quirks and unspoken rules, become integral to your way of life. The New Yorker had a great piece on “extreme commuting,” which sounds like a new event at the X games that will eventually become an Olympic sport (sponsored, perhaps, by various coffee companies? The Starbucks Open? The Folgers Annual?), a few weeks back, about how fixated people become on the tiniest details of their commutes:

People who feel they have smooth, manageable commutes tend to evangelize. Those who hate the commute think of it as a core affliction, like a chronic illness. Once you raise the subject, the testimonies pour out, and, if your ears are tuned to it, you begin overhearing commute talk everywhere: mode of transport, time spent on train/interstate/treadmill/homework help, crossword-puzzle aptitude—limitless variations on a stock tale. People who are normally circumspect may, when describing their commutes, be unexpectedly candid in divulging the intimate details of their lives. They have it all worked out, down to the number of minutes it takes them to shave or get stuck at a particular light.

I grew up in what one of my New York-born friends calls “car country,” and the whole concept of public transportation was, for most of my life, as foreign to me as tea time or universal health care, so it was a strange feeling to be lured in and consumed, Sarlac-pit-monster like, by the maze of tunnels and rails that hums constantly under and above the city. I can sometimes even feel the quakes and shimmers of the F train as it passes by under the road near my apartment.

The subway system is one of those things that defines New York, like Central Park, because most everyone uses it, even though everyone knows the city is neurotic about its trains, I get the impression that most residents, especially the lifers, don’t find this all that strange. They’ve been staring at Subway maps since they could walk. But even though I’ve been sucked into it myself, I can’t help but think how odd it is, how mentally-consuming it can be, how in the vast majority of the country, if someone wants to go somewhere, he or she just gets in the car and goes, and they park right out front and that’s that.

But this is New York, and the normal rules don’t apply, and things don’t quite work the way you expect or want, and some people, possibly myself, just don’t and won’t ever get it, while others are lifers, creatures of the city no matter where they are, foreigners anywhere outside the city’s borders. It’s not just those who grew up here; you can move in and find yourself snapping into the city’s structure like a Lego, going native and living the City life. I’ve tried, I think, but it hasn’t happened yet to me. And thus, though I live and work in New York, and love my neighborhood, and know where to get a mate latte in Park Slope and where to get a good sandwich in Murray Hill and am no longer actively annoyed by having to walk two blocks to switch to the 6 train from the F at Bleecker St., I am not now and, I suspect, never will be, a New Yorker.

Dudes With Star Trek Haircuts

I love Wikipedia:

By almost all current definitions, emo clothing is characterized by tight jeans on males and females alike, long fringe (bangs) often brushed to one side of the face, dyed black, straightened hair, tight t-shirts which often bear the names of rock bands (or other designed shirts), studded belts, belt buckles, Chuck Taylor All-Stars, skate shoes, or other black shoes—often old and beaten up—and thick, black horn-rimmed glasses.^{[5][2][6][7][8][9]} Emo fashion has changed with time; early trends included haircuts similar to those worn by the Romulans and Vulcans in Star Trek, tightly fitting sweaters, button-down shirts, and work jackets (often called gas station jackets).^[6]

I really can't think of a better use for footnotes.

Make It Stop

I do not want to read any more posts on this topic. Honest to God, people. Isn't somebody trying to spend taxpayer money or bomb somebody somewhere? Let's, uh, cut off discussion on this subject pronto.

Futureshock

Thirty years ago, everybody thought the future would be horrible in a shadow and steam-vent, post-apocalyptic urban blight, Blade Runner sort of way. Idolator delivers the bad news that the future will indeed be hellish, but more in the way of being locked in a pink-walled room and forced to watch TRL 24 hours a day:

To summarize: In two years, there will be no record stores, nobody will be making any money, and every movie-going experience will be interrupted by teenagers playing full-length Ashley Tisdale songs on their Nokia. Does that count as a depression?

OK, but at least I'll be able to get Dashboard Confessional on my video iPhone, right? Somehow I feel like this is relevant, but damned if I could tell you why.

Well, Yeah (Yeah Yeah)

The video for the new Yeah Yeah Yeah's song, "Down Boy," is up. It's a pretty good video--suitably wild, if a little raw--and a fantastic song. It sticks to the same sort of riff-mad sonic slaying that made their last record so amazing, but totally grits up the production, like the producer turned all the knobs to diiiiirrrrrrty. Watch it:

The Neighborhood

The Park Slope Reader has a nice, fairly accurate (if too short) article about my neighborhood. This and the New York Times... we're totally famous now.

The Idiot Box

Ross Douthat is right. You really ought to read Emily Nussbaum's post-partum on The Sopranos. She gets the essence of the show exactly right: It was brilliant, but like all of Tony's enterprises, it was a con, a way of making suckers of the audience while bringing them back for more. As I wrote of the first half of the sixth season, the show initially seemed to toy with making its characters sympathetic, but by the time the end rolled around, the writers had "dropped any and all pretense of the show being about somewhat lovable, likable characters." And yet, as Nussbaum points out, we kept on watching, unable to say we hadn't been told.

So now what to watch? The Sopranos is gone, BSG and Lost (which I still maintain are flip sides of the same coin) are on hiatus till 2008, Heroes went out with a ho-hum and won't be back till fall, Brotherhood and Dexter won't be back for at least a few months, and 24 is off the air for now too (and even if it was on, I doubt I could muster much enthusiasm for it -- I didn't even watch the last handful of episodes this season). Adam Sternbergh says to tune in to repeats of Friday Night Lights, and since Catherine has been raving about it pretty much non-stop, I suppose I might. I want to get into Big Love--and Ezra Klein's recent recommendation intrigued me--but I missed the whole first season, and when I tried to watch the first episode of season two, that seemed like kind of a big deal. Maybe it's time to Netflix season one?

AFF Radio

I'm on AFF's Inside Washington Weekly podcast talking about various events in the news this week. I've joined a regular panel and will be on the show every four weeks or so.

There's Been an Accident

At least one commenter expressed confusion at my complete hatred of Crash and asked for a little more detail. To detail the film's myriad problems would require more time and energy than I have right now, but thank goodness for Matt Zoller Seitz, who gave the film a proper berating here.

Yes, I admit, the movie’s more primally exciting than, say, “American Beauty” or “A Beautiful Mind” or “The English Patient,” and more superficially “edgy.” But it’s also dumber and meaner and uglier, an Importance Machine that rolls over you like a tank. And it’s lazy and simplistically cynical about its central subject, race, in that it promulgates a false idea of how Americans express racial attitudes in public.

...[D]eep down [Haggis] doesn’t actually want to say something useful about the modern state of race relations. He just wants to be able to play with racially charged material and be acclaimed for his bravery. The up-to-the-minute realities of American racism are too subtle and elusive for Haggis and his cowriter to grasp, and require too much care to dramatize.

It's worth (re)reading the whole thing.

MyTunes

I have been listening to music. What music, you ask? Well, in a surprisingly well-written review, Pitchfork recommended some flaky French disco duo, Justice, and, remembering how atrocious last year’s number one album pick, The Knife—also in the European electronic vein—was, I decided to check out the train wreck. Guess what? It’s worth listening to, a sort of Williamsburg remix of Nintendo 64 backing tracks into ironic-but-not-exactly-kidding, hot-shit, tight jeans dance record. Don’t believe me? Don’t have a clue what I’m talking about? Yeah, ditto. Fortunately the whole album is online. “Genesis” and “DANCE” are strong, but you will really want to listen to the final track, “Stress.”

The new Queens of the Stone Age, Era Vulgaris, totally brings back 1993, but in a surprisingly not annoying way. (Meaning it's not Audioslave, thank God.) It’s no Songs for the Deaf, mostly because nobody bangs the tubs like Dave Grohl (seriously—dude can pound), but gosh it makes me want to dig out my copy of Alice in Chains’ Dirt and think about moving to Seattle (but ditch the flannel and have awesome biceps). Everybody together now, “Lemme show you the riff to ‘Come as You Are!’”

Minus the Bear is disappointing live, or at least they were last time I saw them at some former Firestone-Tires-turned-club in Orlando, FL. But I got a chance to hear most of their forthcoming record, Planet of Ice, and it’s as spaced-out and sharp as ever; one of the guys in the band used to be in Botch, I think (no, I refuse to look this up; what—it’s not like you don’t have Google yourself), and the band’s technical chops and elegant algebra-core approach makes sure you don’t forget this (presuming, you know, that it’s true). This is what would happen if a bunch of really smart metalheads who also liked U2 and Death Cab for Cutie got together and jammed until it hurt, or maybe if Dillinger Escape Plan started a melodic side project.

While we’re subtracting, I’m still not entirely sure what to think of Minus Story. I usually go for the light and fluffy, pop-tinged indie folk, but My Ion Truss just hasn’t been settling quite right with me. It’s not altogether unpleasant, but so far, it’s one of those dates you don’t mind but at the end, all you think is, “Well, let’s just be friends.” Maybe friends with benefits?

Back to the Fork, they point us toward the new Menomena video, which is rather stunning (see for yourself below). Dig the slow-motion childhood funness! I felt about the same way I feel about Minus Story about Menomena’s first record, I Am the Fun Blame Monster, but I’m pretty certain their latest, Friend and Foe, is my favorite record so far this year.

The best single I’ve heard, though, might be the new Iron & Wine track, “Boy With a Coin.” Everything Iron & Wine has put out is good, but their last album, The Woman King EP, is seriously the best thing since ratty, overgrown full beards, which, for you all hipsters out there sporting the untrimmed-bushes look, Sam Beam like totally invented. Honestly, I’m nearly ready for goatees to come back. Wait, ew. No I’m not.

Fido Review at NRO

I've got a review of Fido at NRO today. I know fanboy love is with this one, but I wasn't impressed.

...Like Edward Scissorhands, Fido sees itself as suburban social satire. But who, outside the mansion-lined streets of ritzy Hollywood communities, really wants yet another movie decrying the soul-crushing conformity of suburbia? Yes, the Sopranos had an original take on the topic, but for the most part, it’s a genre that, like the residents of Willard, deserves to stay dead. Fido, though, rolls out every suburban-hell cliché in the community owner’s guide: the homes all look alike, strivers and social climbers derive status from acts of ostentatious conformity, and everyone pretends to be happy to hide frustration and dissatisfaction. Can I get a big, undead grooaaaan? Curry has simply given us a brightly colored, zombiefied American Beauty; wake me when David Lynch decides to make Blue Velvet II.

Are You or Someone You Know Inolved in Dangerous Pod Racing?

See George Lucas? See what you've done to us? We can't shake you from our lives!

According to the authors [of a study arguing that Anakin Skywalker has borderline personality disorder], who reported their findings at the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting in San Diego, Skywalker meets the criteria for the condition: He has difficulty controlling anger, stress-related breaks with reality (after women in his life die or leave), impulsivity (dangerous pod racing), obsession with abandonment (those women again) and a "pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of ideation and devaluation" (hello, Obi-Wan).

The diagnosis came to Bui, a Star Wars fan, as he watched the series. "I thought to myself, 'That guy is crazy.' But he's not crazy. He's borderline."

Everybody's in therapy, yeah? I look forward to the Woody Allen-directed sequel/prequel/spinoff that features Vader at the shrink's. Lucas is supposed to be developing a Star Wars TV show, right? Well, maybe he can do it Sopranos-style, and have "Annie" spill his feelings in weekly therapy sessions. It worked for gangsters, why not for Sith Lords?

Reduction

I'd just like to note how goofy, awesome, and helpful IMDB's plot keyward are. For example, I'm watching Extreme Measures on HBO. I look it up and find:

Male Rear Nudity / Male Frontal Nudity / Death / Corpse / Bum

I'm totally watching the rest now.

Fender Bender

I am fairly certain that Crash is the most pretentious, irritating, contrived, piece-of-crap movie I've ever seen.

Me on the FCC

I've got a short piece on the court's rebuke of the FCC's indecency calls against Fox in today's NRO.

“I cuss, you cuss, we all cuss for asparagus.” Now, thanks to a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals, we’ll all be able to do so on network television. Last week, the court took a look at an indecency charge leveled by the FCC against Fox for on-air profanity and said, roughly, “To heck with that!”

Made in America

I don't really know what to say about The Sopranos, except that the finale was about as complex and frustrating as you might've expected. David Chase, you are a cruel, cruel man. And we love you for it.

Addendum: A little more from me here.

Movies from 2005

Sometimes I miss movies when they hit the theaters, and because my video-rental habits tend toward films released a decade or more ago, I don’t tend to catch up quickly. So it is that I only just now managed to see both Junebug and The Forty Year Old Virgin.

They’re both wonderful, clever movies, in their own ways—Virgin, a loving send-up of raucous, ridiculous guy culture, with all of its odd obsessions and insecurities, Junebug, an eerie, minor-key story about family and the South.

As far as I’m concerned, Virgin is a sweeter, more mainstream update of Swingers, albeit in a slightly nerdier milieu. They’re both movies about the perpetual male drive for female conquest set against the raunchy, alcohol-infused, pop-culture obsessed world of male friendships. And they’re both essentially romantic comedies made from a guy’s perspective. In fact, most of the gross-out romantic comedy genre that we’ve seen evolve from There’s Something About Mary to The Wedding Crashers can be described this way. Virgin and Swingers are far more subtle than the rest, but they’re all more or less Julia Roberts movies—or, on the lower end, Jennifer Lopez movies—made for the ESPN set. Last summer’s The Break-Up tried to split the difference between the genders, and didn’t fall entirely on its face, but didn’t exactly succeed either.

I’m not entirely sure what to make of it, but it’s interesting that these guy-centric romantic comedies tend to have (or are at least perceived to have) more of a crossover audience and are generally thought to be much better movies, just in terms of cinematic quality, than their female-centric counterparts. With very few exceptions, the Julia Roberts movies and their many imitators have been largely yawned at by critics—not always trashed, but rarely much praised. Whereas even a film like Wedding Crashers—which was crudely funny and genial, but hardly great—gets a lot of fairly strong reviews.

While on this subject, I should point out that When Harry Met Sally, despite sometimes being perceived as a chick-flick, is without a doubt the best romantic comedy ever, and in no small part because it so perfectly balances the male and the female viewpoints. (And please do not try to tell me that Annie Hall should get the top spot; it’s a better movie, but it’s a different genre, a relationship comedy rather than a romantic comedy. Romantic comedies are all about the couple getting either together or back together; relationship comedies are about the entirety, or a large swath of, the relationship experience.)

But on to Junebug, which is, well… I’m not quite certain, actually, except that, as a kid who grew up in the South who has both a fondness and a distaste for the region, several of the scenes struck me as intensely accurate—and thus intensely creepy, or at least squirm-inducing. I think the most surprising thing was how well the film managed to present the South both as a strange and unsettling place, almost a foreign country within the U.S., and also a warm, generous, and perfectly normal place, one where, if you're from there, you could never think of life being any other way.

And it's that tension, between the the strange and unknown and the traditional and familiar--that pushes the film, built on so much uncertainty, forward. It’s really a lovely picture, quiet, clever in a way that isn’t designed to draw attention to itself, yet it’s also frustrating, both in what it tells us and what it refuses to tell. Why, aside from the obvious physical attraction, are Madeleine and George together? Why does Madeleine put up with George’s family—and why, for that matter, does George? How did George, who inherited much of his father’s slowness and shyness with words, make it out of the small, Southern town to begin with? The film takes pains to humanize its Southern characters, but it also doesn’t paint them as any less difficult, ornery, or just plain messed-up as they really are. David Edelstein’s Slate review is the one to read here, and he’s nearly as perplexed as I am—but he, just as I do, thinks it’s something kind of wonderful anyway.

Something's Amis

No, I don't really have anything interesting to add, but you'll enjoy this TNR review of the new Kingsley Amis biography.

I Always Cry at Endings

The Sopranos ends its six-season run this Sunday night. It's a great show on numerous levels--the rare entertainment that is popular, critically acclaimed, and recognized as a lasting classic in its own time--and scholars of television, drama, and pop culture will almost certainly devote thousands of pages to reexamining the show over the next few decades. There's undoubtedly a lot to the series, but a crucial point that's I think has been somewhat overlooked is... well, to find out, you'll have to pick up the new issue of National Review. Although, if you do, I have to ask: Why aren't you a subscriber already?

Flock of...

I've got a piece on the much-acclaimed, long-held-from-release Killer of Sheep in The Washington Times. I probably lose all sorts of film crit and geek cred for this, but I just wasn't all that awed. I saw it twice, and though I liked it better the second time, both viewings I kept on thinking, "Well, I suppose I could come up with all sorts of lofty-sounding pablum for why this is some sort of masterpiece -- hailing it for its realism, its resistance to narrative convention, its documentary grit, its debt to the Italian neorealists -- but that's just not what I'm actually seeing." I sort of wonder if there were other critics who saw it and made the other choice.

"I'm Not Saying They're in Pre-Production, But WE. DON'T. KNOW."

Nothing to say, really, except that this may be the best thing I've ever seen. Ever.


In The Know: America Braces For New Wayans Brothers Movie



I'm not so keen on recovery prospects myself. And obviously the real threat is that we don't even know how many of them there are. Ten? A dozen? Ignoring them could easily breed more.

Book Deals

OK, so it sounds like getting a book deal, quiting work, and living the writer's life is pretty much the same as living the regular old working, 9-5 writer's life. For example.

“I found, when I quit The Times, that the biggest problem is loneliness,” Mr. Anderson admitted.

“Basically, I was giving myself panic attacks in the beginning,” said Ms. McLaren, who took a leave of absence from her column-writing job to move to an isolated farmhouse outside Toronto and write her novel in solitude. “As a newspaper writer, people were always walking over to your desk and being like, ‘Where is it? How’s it coming?’ All that was taken away—there’s no deadline.”

And then there’s the self-loathing.

“You’re not letting people read it as you write it. Nobody has ever read what you’re doing. It could be terrible. It could be brilliant. And you start to think, ‘Oh God, this is a complete piece of shit that couldn’t be published—nobody is going to read it.’ But then you have a sandwich and go, ‘I am a genius and I’m going to win the Booker Prize.’”

Or at least get a link from a cool blog. But then you write the thing, publish it, a few people read it, some like it, some don't, and by then you only sort of care cause, whatamigonnawriteaboutnext? No. For REAL. WHAT?

That said, I'll still take a book deal from anyone who's got an extra one laying around.

Jack to the Future

I never posted on the end of Lost this season, but this is what I wrote at the time but just never got around to putting up:

I gave in and read the spoilers in advance. The episode had been billed as a SERIOUS SHOCKER that CHANGES EVERYTHING, and the stuff I was reading from people who’d looked at the spoilers sort of did me in. They were saying it was some sort of major, major reveal. But no, nothing of the sort. Was there ever any real chance Jack and Kate wouldn't make it off the island? Honestly? So, I was fairly disappointed by the spoilers when I read them, but I do think they generally played much better in the show. Charlie’s death was nicely handled, which is more than I can say for most of his irritating subplots over the last two seasons. It was also nice to see Locke back in commanding, enigmatic form, and the stuff with the phone and the message from Penny almost felt like real development.

Almost.

Unfortunately, like most everything in Lost, it’s all a shell game. After three years, the show still hasn’t actually given any real information about its central mysteries, namely the island’s powers and their origins. We’re no closer to understanding the smoke monster, or Jacob, or the healing powers, or the dead relatives who keep showing up than we were during the third episode. Sure, we now know that Jack and Kate eventually get off the island--and we're foaming at the mouth to find out how. Seems exciting, right? But that’s a typical move for this show: Introduce a new, cool-seeming mystery to distract us from the fact that it’s refusing to answer old ones.

That said, I think the show has made major improvements the last half of this season, and I enjoy it now a lot more than I used to—mostly because I’ve completely given up hope of anything resembling solid answers. This is the best of its season finales, but it’s still a con, albeit a rather diverting one.